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Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) is a political lobbying group based in Washington, DC, which claims to advocate a reduction in U.S. government waste.
Background
Founded in 1984 by conservative industrialist J. Peter Grace and reporter Jack Anderson. Although the organization professes to be bipartisan, the legislators referenced on its Mission/History page are all Republicans. However, the group produces a "Porker of the Month," suggesting the biggest wasteful spenders and the two for September 2005 were Republican leaders Tom DeLay and Don Young.
From the CAGW Mission/History page: "The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW) is the lobbying arm of CAGW. The CCAGW mission is to advocate the elimination of waste and inefficiency in government through nonpartisan public education programs and lobbying activities."
Criticisms/accusations
- Anti-Death Tax - an avowed goal of the George W. Bush administration.
- Anti-Linux
- "Linux is an open source operating system, meaning it is freely distributed along with its source code so that anyone can make changes and redistribute it. There is no need to wait for patches or software upgrades as in the case of proprietary software. Yet while the software itself is free, the cost to maintain and upgrade it can become very expensive. Acquisition costs commonly represent only a small percentage of the total cost of ownership. Maintenance, training and support are often more expensive with open source than proprietary software." (source)
- Pro-Microsoft
- A search of their own database displays a long list of press releases advocating an end to anti-trust actions against the company.
- Corruption
- An InternetNews.com article accused both CAGW and Americans for Technology Leadership (ATL) of generating fabricated letters of grass-roots support for Microsoft. "The groups receive some funding from Microsoft but won't disclose how much."
- Anti-Open Standards
- Coming out against the state of Massachusetts' use of the open standards OpenDocument format, the organization's press release states: "It is bad procurement policy for any state to unilaterally lock itself into one set of technologies," CAGW President Tom Schatz said. "Agencies should be able to accept bids from any company that can provide the desired product or service. Government earns the best value for taxpayer dollars through a competitive, transparent, and accountable bidding process." (Source)
- Newsforge, an open-source journalism source, reported on the move while LWN.net came out against CAGW, saying:
- "Presumably it is just fine for the state to lock itself into proprietary formats," referencing the way Microsoft has been accused of locking in users by restricting access to its document format.
- Newsforge later references an article on a court decision that may prevent other companies from discerning the Microsoft document format:
- "... this means that most software products and some hardware products cannot be reverse engineered in this judicial circuit. That obviously has a detrimental effect on innovation, and is likely to allow vendors to lock users to their products, resulting in higher prices." (source)
- See also: Open Letter to Alan Yates
External links
"Citizens Against Government Waste"